Summoned to Tourney, Much
by Independent Dude
Summary: AU crossover between BtVS and the book "Tomorrow and Tomorrow", where the AU is the Buffyverse, and Buffy is the only hope for the future...
1. Prologue

Summoned to Tourney, Much?

BtVS / Tomorrow and Tomorrow crossover.

Chapter 1: Prologue

_One girl, alone…_

The slayer awoke to pain. Howling, disorienting pain. She screamed, not knowing or caring who heard her and how wimpy it may have made her look. Then she sucked in a hard breath and screamed again.

After the third scream, the memories started flooding back. She remembered waking up in the 23rd century to find a world not all that different from the one she had left. She remembered waking up in the 29th century, to find that she had been moved from a bunker on earth to a space station orbiting one of Neptune's moons. And she remembered waking up in the 31st _millennium_ only to learn that there was still no hope of reviving –

"Angel!" she shouted, or as much as she could shout, with vocal chords hoarse not just from screaming but also from countless eons of disuse.

Despite being weak from the revivification process, Buffy hopped down from the cryo-preservation ark and dragged herself over to the identical piece of machinery next to hers. The black coffin-shaped object was a fusion of magic and technology. It had been Angel himself who had salvaged it and its twin from the ruins of the Wolfram and Hart building, after he had defeated the evil corporation which had for so long kept him on a leash. And it was Angel himself who was now locked inside the device, kept in suspended animation until such time as he could be brought back to life and cured of the magical blight which was eating away at his body.

"Please be careful, Miss Summers," a metallic voice echoed through the chamber. "You have been asleep for a long time."

Buffy turned to see a familiar sight moving to her aid: her servo-unit. She could tell right away that the robot had upgraded some of its parts, but it still retained the same basic shape it'd had when it had been given to her in 2873: a hemispherical central processing unit resting on top of an upright cylindrical body with wheels. She'd named it Arty, in tribute to a long-forgotten movie franchise.

"What's the date?" Buffy asked, her voice croaking.

"That is a difficult question to answer," said the servitor. "The way we measure time has changed greatly in the approximately 14.2 million sidereal years since you were last awakened…"

"THE DATE!" insisted Buffy.

"March 1st, approximately 14.2 million sidereal years since you were last awakened," said Arty.

Buffy paused, processing the figure that the robot had given her. It also struck her as odd that the robot had developed a sense of sarcasm, as its personality had been strictly mechanical during her last two forays back into the world of the living. But she was mainly still trying to process the ridiculously huge number that he – _it_ – had just given her.

"Fourteen million…_years?_"

"That estimate will suffice for our present purposes, Miss Summers. But I am afraid that we have more pressing matters to attend to than your rather tenuous grasp of mathematics."

Buffy ignored the blatant insult, as more memories were starting to come back to her. She remembered now how Angel had won back his right to the Shon-shu prophecy by destroying Wolfram and Hart and their allies. He had been turned back into a human. But the forces of evil had managed to insert a poison pill into the deal: Angel was human, but he had inherited an inoperable cancer within his newly restored human body. No one in the 21st century had been able to cure the disease which was wasting him away, not even with the use of sorcery. The only hope for him had been to freeze him, until such time as the brute force of human technology could overcome the subtle magics threatening to take his life.

For Buffy, fate had been cruel in that, so soon after being reunited with Angel, she would lose him for good. Therefore, she had not hesitated. She had ordered herself frozen, too, only to be awakened when Angel had been cured and they could be together again. She could still see the tears running down Giles' cheeks as he shut the lid to her cryo-ark.

But the future had not yet held any answers for her. The treasure hunters who had revived her in 2241 had done so by accident; Buffy had dealt with them. But the doctors, once she made contact with that era's "proper authorities," had been just as perplexed by Angel's mysterious ailment as their Gen-Xer counterparts in the past. The only advice they had been able to give was to go deeper into the future, and wait out a cure.

So she had. And she had been awakened in 2871, just a few years shy of her 900th birthday. And that was when the bottom had fallen out of her plan.


	2. Stops Along the Way 1

Summoned to Tourney, Much?

BtVS / Tomorrow and Tomorrow crossover.

All Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters belong to Joss Whedon; all Tomorrow and Tomorrow characters and worlds belong to the late Charles Sheffield.

Chapter 2: Stops Along the Way 1

_One girl, alone…_

Buffy sat in one of the chairs opposite Leon's desk, as she had often done over the past six months. The demon with the asymmetric horns was detailing once more why the ritual which was supposed to have revived her beloved Angel had failed. Buffy was paying almost no attention, as she was looking out the space station's window down upon Triton's surface.

"Ms. Summers, are you listening?" asked Leon.

"What? Oh, sorry," said the slayer, her voice sounding even farther away than the frozen methane wasteland below. "Lost in thought."

The demon softened his tone. "Look, I'm the one who is sorry," he said, "for it was I who promised you that this would work."

"I don't blame you, Leon," said Buffy, but not after a short pause. "God knows you poured enough of your life into this fool's errand."

"Now don't go talking like that, Buffy," said Leon. "What you call a 'fool's errand' my coven considered a holy task."

Buffy looked out again at Triton as she considered the demon's words. It was true. Leon and his associates had literally spent the better part of a millennium preparing for the ritual. She could still see the magic-energy collectors which had been built centuries ago on Triton, now sitting dormant and useless after they had finally been called upon to channel their precious commodity up to the focusing ring surrounding _Triton Dream_'s habitat. Indeed, her and Angel's cryoarks had only been moved to the station a scant few decades before the ceremony was to begin, and even then due largely to the "political instability" which Leon had explained was spreading like wildfire across the inner planets. Leon had made it clear that the original intent was to wait as long as possible before setting the initial stages of the ritual into motion. He had also been extremely apologetic that Buffy had been revived a full earth year ahead of schedule, left to wander the station and worry until they needed her for her part in the two-week-long ritual.

"You're right…I'm sorry…Let's go over again what went wrong," said the slayer, turning her body so that she was facing the demon properly and ladylike.

Leon leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers as he resumed his explanation. "Quite simply put, Ms. Summers, there wasn't enough magic left in the solar system."

Buffy again drifted away mentally. Leon had told her this part of the story so many times, that she could almost recall it by heart:

In the beginning, when demons had first come to the earth, the universe was still expanding and cooling from the shock of the Big Bang. As the magic had flowed in to this dimension from The Great Beyond, it was rapidly carried away with the expanding space-time itself. At first, there was so much magic that what was lost was quickly replaced with more coming in from the netherworld. There would have come a time when the inflow would have been surpassed by the outflow, and the magic would have washed away then, if not for the appearance of a new factor: humans.

"The best name your science has ever been able to put on it," said Leon, "is the 'collective unconscious.' Whatever it is, it transcends the dimensions, linking you all together in ways you cannot possibly comprehend. Most magic plays off of it, resonates off of it to create what we perceive as spells and curses and the like. Things just developed that way – maybe it was due to some mutual attraction of fields, maybe one of our early sorcerers foresaw what was coming and bound the magic to it to buy us time, we'll never know – but the upshot was, the magic held, and remained on earth even as it was dissipating everywhere else. And so the system remained stable for a very long time, right up until relatively recently."

Buffy knew where the story was going next. It made sense to her, unlike many of the other things she had encountered in her journey through the future. Still, she found Leon's telling of it to be strangely compelling each time.

"See, even as your people spread across the globe, the field was strong enough to encompass them, as thanks to simple geology, no human could ever be more than eight thousand miles from any other. Even when your people walked on the moon, that was only a few at a time, and they were only gone for a few days at most. The field was strained, but it did not break.

"But then your kind began to spread across the solar system. A trickle at first, going to Mars and the Jovian moons, but hundreds more followed to settle permanently out there. The field began to get distended, as it stretched to contain those distant colonies. Then more and more fled the earth, and your species' center of gravity, for lack of a better term, began to shift outward. Soon, a not-insignificant percentage of mankind was living on other planets. The field stretched even more. And then, you really did it: you sent an expedition to another star.

"Do you have any idea how far away Canopus is? Really? The distance is measured in light-years. Ruminate on that term for a moment: _light year_. The amount of distance it takes light – the fastest, most instantaneous thing in the universe – a full year to cover. The very concept seems like two completely different things mashed together, like apples and oranges mixed in an electric blender and shaken afterwards. Once those two dozen souls passed the Oort Cloud and left behind Sol's gravity well, it was like a bullet piercing a balloon from the inside out. The field was broken, fatally thinned out, and the magic began to bleed away from the earth once again."

Buffy had understood for months now why Leon and his cohort had had to begin their work on Triton so far in advance; the demon leader had felt that two full revolutions of Neptune around the sun had been necessary to scoop up as much of the ebbing magic as possible. Everyone had thought that that would be enough to power the ritual which would cure Angel of his blight. But too much magic had been poured out, and the ritual had fizzled out right from the start.

"So that's it then," said the slayer. "There's no hope for Angel's resurrection. There's no more magic."

"There's still magic," said Leon. "It's just too diffuse now."

Though she knew what how the demon would answer, she asked anyway, "there's not any way to get it back?"

Leon paused before he spoke. "Well, there is a possibility, but it's so unlikely that…no, forget I said anything."

Buffy was paying full attention now. This was new; in six months, Leon had never said anything before about there even being a chance to get Angel back. "Leon…tell me," she demanded.

Leon hesitated, but then gave in and continued as the slayer hung on every word.

"The magic has spread out beyond the confines of earth, and will keep spreading, as long as the universe continues to expand. But what if the universe were to stop expanding, and begins to contract? All of the magic would be pulled back with it, until everything converged back to a single point. There, at that point, at the eschaton, all the magic that ever existed would be available for you to use to resurrect Angel. It could be done."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute…" said Buffy. "I'm no expert, but I've sat in enough waiting rooms and read enough out-of-date copies of Popular Science to know that the universe is not going to collapse, but keep on expanding forever and ever…something about a cosmological constant…"

"Yes, the cosmological constant. The thing Einstein called his 'greatest blunder.' You know he fudged it, right, just to make a publication deadline? I met him, you see…Irony of ironies, of course, it turned out that that 'cosmological constant' actually existed, and that it described a property of the universe that was pushing against gravity to cause the universe to expand…No, the irony is that Einstein's 'blunder' wasn't in the creation of the constant, but rather in its calculation."

One of Leon's associates came in to quickly whisper something into his ear and then moved to stand at attention by the wall. Leon resumed his explication.

"See, the bigger the value of the constant, the faster and more irreversibly the universe expands. In your time, it was thought that the value of the constant was so big that the universe's expansion would continue, and even accelerate, and not slow down and reverse itself. No – funny story – Einstein slipped a decimal point. The value is actually a lot closer to the borderline value of whether there will be eternal expansion or an eventual 'Big Crunch' at the end of time, than your cosmologists initially thought. At least, that's what the cosmologists of today believe."

"You mean, they're not sure?" asked Buffy.

"It's up for debate," said Leon. "They have the theory, but the jury's still out as far as concrete evidence goes. And, like anything, read one book about physics, it'll say one thing; read another, it'll argue the opposite position with equal vim."

"Well, is there anyway to know for sure? I mean, whether the universe dies with a Big Bang or a Not-So-Big Whimper, wouldn't that be something you'd want to know if you were going to be looking at houses?" asked the slayer.

"I agree with you," replied the demon, "but, as I said, the experts themselves don't know the answer. The bookies on Titan are giving even money, if that helps."

Buffy sat silently for a moment and contemplated what Leon had told her. She had been given what seemed to be another chance of getting back Angel. She did not understand how it was possible, given what little she knew of theoretical physics, but she did not care. All she knew was that she would have another opportunity, if things worked out right. She would have to make sure that she was ready when that chance came.

"I need to go back under," she said.

"You mean, back into suspended animation?"

"Yes. There's nothing I can do here now, right? But if I wait, and someone in the future is able to wake me up and give me a go/no-go on the whole collapsing universe thing, I can start putting things together for another shot at reviving Angel. So put me under."

"You realize it may take a long, long time before scientists are able to make a definitive conclusion about the nature of the universe," admonished the demon.

"I don't care," said Buffy. "There's nothing for me to do here; let me stay asleep until I can know for sure whether I can help my Angel."

"I figured you were going to say that," admitted Leon. "I will see to the arrangements personally." He got up from his desk. "There is one more thing, though."

Buffy stood up, too. "What is it?"

Leon looked down, as if unwilling to look her in the eye. "I haven't mentioned this until now, what with the after-action analysis of the ritual keeping my coven and I busy for the past few months, but we've been hired to do another job." He looked up.

Buffy stopped in her tracks. "What kind of job?"

"Large-scale terraforming. The Consortium of Outer Planets wants us to consult and assist on Project Light Bulb. They're going to try to turn one of the gas giants into a second sun, so that the Inner System doesn't have a monopoly on the energy market. We put a bid in a few years ago, when it looked like, well, like everything was going to go fine with the ritual. At the time, I didn't expect we'd get the job. It wasn't supposed to start for another 20 years, either, but apparently the guys who low-balled us bailed, and now the COP is nervous and wants to move up the time table. They need us out there to do a feasibility study by the end of the year."

"Wow." Buffy tried to wrap her mind around the concept, and pretty much failed. "Well, good for you. Which gas giant?" she asked, slowly remembering that all four outer planets were gas giants, and that she herself was currently inside what had to be minimum safe distance from one.

"Uranus," said Leon, which caused the other demon in the room to chuckle involuntarily, until Leon's sharp glance made it stop. "The reason I bring it up, Ms. Summers, is that we are still technically under contract to you, and we need to be released before we can move forward."

Buffy thought about what Leon said. To be perfectly technical, the demon and his coven were under contract to Angel, because they were on retainer to Wolfram and Hart (apparently, when one was on retainer to Wolfram and Hart, one _stayed_ on retainer to Wolfram and Hart). However, with Angel incapacitated, they had deferred all decisions concerning the ritual to her, as if she had power of attorney over her lover in all things magical.

And defer they had, staying in orbit around Triton for centuries to prepare for one task that would define their existence. Buffy realized that she owed these demons, and that she could not begrudge them their freedom now that the task was complete.

"Once you've put me back under, you'll send someone to wake me periodically, right, so I can check on the most current advances in theoretical physics?" Buffy asked.

"Buffy." Leon turned to look at the slayer. "My loyalty to you and Angel is not shallow. I have not yet signed the final contract with the Consortium; I intend to wrangle them into providing us with an android servitor that can be programmed to take care of you while you're frozen. You know, as a deal-sweetener. Also, I think we can tweak the spells powering your cryoarks to get a few extra millennia out of them."

"Thank you," said Buffy. "So…do you need me to sign something for you? Does Neptune have its own notary public?"

"The contract was magical in nature, so verbal notification will suffice," said Leon. "The effect will be instantaneous."

"Okay, then. Leon, I release you. Go. Help someone else the way you have helped me."

Leon nodded and bowed to her. Then he nodded to the other demon in the room, motioning it to leave. "It will take a few hours to get your cryoark ready. I would suggest that you take advantage of them, and take in the view." He gestured to the window.

With that, the demon left Buffy alone with her thoughts.


	3. Stops Along the Way 2

Summoned to Tourney, Much?

BtVS / Tomorrow and Tomorrow crossover.

All Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters belong to Joss Whedon; all Tomorrow and Tomorrow characters and worlds belong to Charles Sheffield. See Author's Note at end.

Chapter 3: Stops Along the Way 2

"So, how many of you are there in your 'composite'?" Buffy asked Arty as he led her back to the cryoark chamber. The servitor had just finished giving her a virtual tour of the solar system and nearby human colonies.

The robot seemed to sigh, as this was the fourth time the slayer had asked basically the same question. "It is not a band, Ms. Summers. I am part of a larger organism, composed of humans, artificial life forms, and even a few of the surviving demons. Our minds are linked in near instantaneous communication, sharing each others' memories and experiences. In fact, as I stand here with you, I am also climbing the face of Olympus Mons on Mars, parasailing on terraformed Venus, and experiencing thousands of other things all throughout the solar system."

Buffy understood now why Arty's responses had seemed to hold an emotional undertone. It was not just her servitor speaking, but all of the individuals linked together responding as one. She grasped the concept: a group of people (and now, apparently, non-humans, too) joined together through telepathic communications linkages to form a greater whole. She had had a little experience with gestalt life forms back in college, when she, Willow, Xander, and Giles had joined together to create a being powerful enough to fight Adam. But what Arty was now a part of was not some temporary spell, but a lifestyle choice.

A lot had changed since she had last been revived.

They reached the chamber with the two cryoarks. Buffy looked again at Angel's pristinely preserved face. Unlike Buffy, the human-turned-vampire-turned-back-to-human had not been awakened since the 23rd century, when the doctors had told him that they were unable to cure his mysterious disease. His cryoark had been shut down twice, briefly, once for Leon's ritual, and once for the installation of Trismon Sorel's new power source. (_As close to 100% energy efficient as science can approach_, he had said, _and I can provide adequate instructions for the construction of backups, if need be more_.) Even now the device hummed audibly as the 306th century technology continued to power it.

"Tell me why I'm awake," said Buffy.

The robot paused before answering again, although this time, it seemed not so much a sigh, as a marshalling of resolve. "I have not forgotten your instructions, Ms. Summers. You had asked to be awakened in only one circumstance: when the universe had collapsed to the eschaton point, and enough magic had been condensed that it could be used to cure Angel. Until such time, you both were to be kept safely preserved inside the cryoarks. And I did follow those orders. I kept watch over the two of you for fourteen million of your years. But now those orders have become self-contradictory."

Once again, Arty's holographic projectors fired up, and turned the chamber into a perfect 3-D movie theater. This time, however, instead of showing her Sol and the rest of the Terran Confederation, the display replicated the contents of the cryoark chamber, and then zoomed in until Buffy could see that the robot wanted to focus on her and Angel's frozen tombs.

"This view is a representation of your bodies inside the cryoarks" said Arty. "I have sped up the simulation, to a scaling factor of twenty years for each second, and taken liberties with enhancing the image so that you can see the effects of Planck-sized events at the resolution level of visible light, but other than those modifications, you can be assured that this image is an accurate representation of the last ten thousand sidereal years. Watch closely."

Buffy watched. As she did so, she noticed that first the cryoarks and then the bodies inside them began to turn transparent. And then she noticed the flashes. At first, she only saw one or two, and only if she happened to be looking in the right place at the right time, like with a meteor shower on a late August night. But after the first minute, as she realized that the flashes were not just a trick of her eyes, she saw more and more of them. After a few more minutes, Buffy came to realize that the flashes had not increased in frequency, but rather it was that she just had not noticed them at first, and thus made the fallacious assumption that they had not been occurring as often at the beginning of the simulation. Sometimes, they would come in bunches, four or five of them almost simultaneously in different parts of her body, and other times she could count out a full _three-mississippi_ between single events. Buffy's slayer-grade senses and reflexes allowed her to discern that the flashes were averaging just a hair more than once per second. And they were also happening in Angel's body, as well, at what appeared to be the same rate. Offhand, she thought about Arty's decision to make one second stand for twenty years, and wondered if it was intentional on his part, or just a number that seemed sufficiently round to his artificial mind.

After the video had ended and the Arty's holoprojectors had dimmed, Buffy could only ask, "What…The hell…Was that?"

"Those, Ms. Summers," the robot said, "were fluctuations in the quantum vacuum. They occur when particle and anti-particle pairs are created and annihilate each other in the space-time foam."

"Oh," said Buffy, as if Arty had just told her how graphite was made.

"They are happening all the time, all around us. You only saw the ones which directly intersected with your and Angel's physical locations over a set period of time. There are countless more occurring in this room, and in this station, as we speak. They likely happened to you while you were on Earth, living in the 21st century."

"It looked like we were being bombarded," said Buffy.

The robot paused in its speech again, this time resuming with an unmistakable undercurrent of respect. "An apt analogy, Ms. Summers. Especially since the effects of said 'bombardment' have a directly harmful impact on your bodies."

"Harmful?" exclaimed Buffy. "You said these annihilation thingies happened to me on Earth. I don't recall being annihilated."

"The energy of each individual fluctuation is very small, Ms. Summers. And they take place on such a small scale that they would likely pass through the spaces between the molecules comprising your pain receptors. However, the energy of the fluctuations can, given the right set of conditions, damage the base codes of your DNA"

Buffy shivered, the same way she had shivered after she had seen that TV show about the bacteria which lived on people's skin. It was frightening to know that all her life the universe had literally been taking potshots at her.

"But wait," said Buffy, as reason kicked back in, "if each second was twenty years, that means that the average person only takes about three or four direct hits during their lifetime, maybe five or six if they get a birthday shout out by a fat weatherman on the Today Show." Once again, Buffy couldn't help but think that Arty's choice of a scaling factor had been deliberate, as it was definitely helping her wrap her brain around the subject.

"An insignificant amount of damage to be sure, Ms. Summers," said the servitor, "made even more insignificant by the fact that living cells have microscopic structures to repair faults in the DNA strands. However, cells in suspended animation are not able to effect such repairs. The damage caused by quantum fluctuations accumulates over time."

"Am I in danger now?" asked Buffy quietly, conspicuously examining the skin on her arms. Though it was probably psychosomatic, Buffy could swear that she could begin to feel a tumor or two growing inside her lungs.

"No, Ms. Summers. You have not been exposed long enough to suffer significant damage. Not enough fluctuations have occurred to cause irreparable harm. However, if Dr. Sorel's calculations are correct, and you need to be frozen for the full fifty billion years that he believes that the universe will take to reach the eschaton, it is unlikely that you and your companion will survive for very long after being revived."

(_Time, time, and time and a half again the age of existence_, Trismon had said. He had been such a poet; it was no wonder that Buffy had stayed with him for so long.)

"I hope you can see my problem," said Arty. "If I had followed your orders, and left you in the cryoark, you would have died, and I would not have kept you safely preserved. So it was necessary to disobey your orders in order to protect you."

It began to dawn on Buffy why the robot had felt it necessary to awaken her. No one she knew had ever bothered to think about the threat posed to them by the very fabric of space-time, because its effects were so miniscule. Even in 30,516, when the human lifespan was measured in centuries (what had Trismon's joke been? _Fifteen hundred's the new twelve hundred?_), not many people would have reached the triple digits in terms of damaging fluctuations. People lost more cells than that each time they put on a tight pair of shoes or suffered a paper cut.

But she and Angel were different: no one had ever _existed_ for as long as the two of them had. Whereas everyone else in human history had simply died of natural or man-made causes before they had had the chance to be hurt by this previously un-thought-of phenomenon, the slayer and her lover were in a unique position to be the proving ground for the universe's newest and most pernicious way of culling the herd. How could one protect oneself from the nature of nature itself? Eventually, enough chromosomes would be hit, and, with their means of self-repair frozen, enough cells would die that the rest of the body would be unable to carry on. She and Angel would literally die in their sleep.

"Yes, I get it," she said. "But what can we do about it?"

"There is a solution," said Arty. "Uploading."

Buffy looked quizzically at the robot, and it explained.

"Just as the people of your time were able to map the human genome, over the past several million years the people of this time have been able to map the mind, as it were. It is now possible, and has been for some time, to digitize and upload all of the quantum bits of information contained in a consciousness into computer memory. By storing the two of you electronically, we would avoid altogether the problem of damage occurring to your bodies."

"You mean, leave my body behind and live inside a machine? I don't much like that idea," said Buffy. "No offense," she quickly added.

"None taken," said the robot. "Your DNA and other somatic information can be stored along with your consciousness and can be used to reconstitute a cloned body when it is time to revive you. The amount of memory and effort needed to store information about physical form is almost an afterthought compared to that needed to store a mind."

"You mean put me into another body? Wow. Talk about your brave new world."

"Technically, it would be another version of your own body," said Arty, "An identical clone works best with the process. Apparently there is some formative relationship between a person's synapses and the mind stored within them. A person could be downloaded into another body, but the interface would have some minor difficulties, due to them not exactly matching up."

"Can you do that with Angel?" asked the slayer. "Put him into another body?"

"If you are asking, can Angel's consciousness be placed into another body as a way of curing the disease which infects him, then the answer is no. If that were the case, I would have awakened you long ago, Ms. Summers. Unfortunately, as you well know, the pathogen is magical in nature and thus infects Angel's mind equally as it does his body. Downloading his consciousness into a new body would only result in the body becoming infected all over again."

(_That is why the doctors of your time could not cure it, my love, _Trismon had said. _They were looking for something in the realm of the physical, when the initial site of infection was his soul._)

Buffy had guessed the answer before she finished asking the question: even Trismon's carefully crafted plan for getting rid of the blight was going to require reviving Angel first and then curing him. Nonetheless, it had been worth asking. As far beyond her previous experience as Buffy was now, she needed to be sure that she did not ignore anything that could possibly help her in her quest to save Angel.

Another thought occurred to the slayer. "Wait. If the problem is quantum fluctuations causing damage to our bodies, wouldn't we be at even more risk if were stored in a molecular memory array over the years? I mean, those circuits are really small, right, and therefore even more susceptible to quantum effects?" (Trismon had known a lot about computers, too.) "Aren't we just doing the whole frying pan/fire thing there?"

"And that is why I intend to upload multiple copies of the two of you," said the servitor, and with that pronouncement Buffy could definitely detect a sense of pride at its own cleverness. "The copies will be compared with each other periodically, line by line. Any bit of information that differs from the same bit in other copies will be assumed to have been corrupted, and thus it will be corrected. As the odds of the same bit being corrupted in the same way in more than one copy of you are almost astronomically against, this cross-checking will insure that we have uncontaminated copies of you both when we reach the eschaton and can revive you. Also, the copies will be stored in memory in multiple locations across the solar system, preventing loss due to natural disaster or other catastrophe. The moon we are orbiting, for example, is statistically overdue for a Level 6 cometary impact."

Buffy chewed on all that the robot had told her. The idea of digitizing herself in hope of being cloned sometime in the far future scared her and went against every survival instinct. However, she knew that now was not time to grow cold feet, not after having come so far. When Buffy spoke again, it was with resolve.

"Well, what are we waiting for, then? Let's get on with the uploading." Brave new world indeed.

Arty misunderstood her question. "I am delaying because I must get your cryoark ready, Ms. Summers," he said. "The uploading process actually works most efficiently if the subject is in suspended animation. In fact, I can begin the process with your companion now." At that, several wheeled machines rolled past the two of them and began attaching themselves to Angel's cryoark.

Buffy watched the mechanical ballet for a little over a minute, ever protective of her lover, then she realized that the uploading process was probably something that she did not want to observe, lest the sight of those machines doing something massively invasive to Angel's body drive her mad. She turned away, staring down at the viewplate of her own cryo-coffin. A faint reflection stared back at her, showing the face of a still-young woman not yet sure she was doing the right thing.

(_Go. Go be with your Angel, my love,_ Trismon's last message had told her. _I should have seen that the universe had other plans for you, should have seen that trying to keep you here with me was selfish in the extreme. I accept now that your heart will always be with _him_, as you told me at the beginning of our many years together.)_

Buffy was not sure how much time elapsed, only that it was Arty who broke the silence. "I am ready for you now, Ms. Summers," he said.

Buffy took a moment to compose herself, and then pressed the control that opened the ark. She climbed in once the door was fully open, and began to situate herself inside the device the way that she remembered having been shown way back in the 21st century. Once more the slayer paused to collect her thoughts.

She thought she had prepared for every eventuality that the future could throw at her, that could get in the way of her and Angel being together. But what Arty had shown to her brought home very clearly that she could not know what that future held. The revelation of the threat of quantum fluctuations had hit her sideways; she could never have anticipated that problem. How many other unknown dangers awaited her on her journey?

She thought of Arty. She figured it must have been one of his human components that had given him the emotional impetus to disobey the letter of her orders so that he could follow their spirit, but nonetheless it had been the robot itself – _himself_ – who had had to pull the trigger on that decision. It must have taken a huge leap of computerized faith for the servitor to start that revivification sequence. She owed him.

She owed them all, really. Leon, who had given his entire existence to the preparation of a single ritual. Trismon, who had stayed by her side for over seventy years, all the while helping her to his best ability in her quest to make a future with another. And the servitor, who had guarded over her through entire geologic ages.

Buffy sat up, taken by an urge to acknowledge the robot's sacrifice for her. The uploading machines, now done with Angel, stopped as one, as if afraid to harm a sleeper not quite sleeping. She turned to face the servitor.

"Arty," said Buffy. "In addition to your previous orders, you can wake me in one other circumstance."

"And what would that be, Ms. Summers?" The robot faced her, expectantly. The room was silent as none of the other machines moved.

"If there's ever anything I can do for you."

Buffy laid back down, and toggled the switch that shut the lid to the cryoark. As she began to lose consciousness, she could hear the machines hooking themselves up to the outside.

**AUTHOR'S NOTE**

Thank you for sticking with this story far. I needed a couple of chapters for exposition, especially for those who aren't familiar with _Tomorrow and Tomorrow_. The story will really start to cook in the next chapter.

The scientific concepts of composite lifeforms, damaging quantum fluctuations, and uploading minds all come from Sheffield's novel.


End file.
